General Forum

Trying to get ideas on categorizing a HOF collection:

Year ?  Product?  Player?  Team?  Anything else?

Thx

Ever so briefly, I toyed with the idea of a "Hall of Fame binder". My thought was one page of every player in the baseball Hall of Fame. Massive binder? Yeah. It would have been. Not to mention the amount of pages. But my rough sketch in my head looked like this:

• 1 rookie card for everyone who had one 1981-present; 1 card from their playing days for everyone else.
• 1 memorabilia or autograph
• 1 chrome card, preferably a refractor
• 1 serial numbered card
• 1 insert
• 4 cards that I just liked

Obviously not all of these are obtainable for everyone. I'll never own a Ty Cobb card from his playing days; not every Hall member has a memorabilia card or autograph or a chrome/refractor. Heck, some of them don't even have 9 cards.

But overall, my objective was to put together a representation of the best to play the game (or coach it, or umpire it, etc) with 9 cards that I liked and were fun. My way of falling into what I consider to be "gimmicks" that card companies use these days, I suppose.

I might still do it someday. But anyway, to answer your original question in a shorter way: collect cards that maybe you wouldn't usually collect, or that you find fun or interesting.

I've done something like this for the Baseball HoF.  Basically, when looking for a card for this collection I look roughly in this order.  I strongly prefer cards that are the standard size.  I also prefer cards that have complete stats on the back.  Failing that, I will also accept cards that show the career stats for the player in question.  

If the player was a Topps, All Star Rookie, I try to get the card that shows this (even in those years where there was nothing indicating ASR inclusion on the card).

I then look for complete or career stats.  Topps Archives is usually a good source for cards of HoFers from the 60s onward (and a few older ones, though the coverage there is a little spotty).  Topps Stadium Club often has older players in really striking photos but they only include career stats.

The Conlon Collection is a great source for complete stats cards for older HoFers.

For really old HoFers, (19th century) this American Archives Origins of Baseball set is pretty good.

For Negro League stars, Larry Fritsch and Eclipse will get you a good part of the way there.

It's been a fun set to collect.  Good luck!

Dave

Here's a trivia question...  There's only one non Negro League HoF player for which I've been unable to find a standard sized card.  Can anyone guess who it might be?

So sorry, just can't explain what I have and would like to do.

So, let's try again... I'm downsizing....by trading and selling all my Hockey and Basketball. But before I do or did, I pulled 1 card of every player, in every set, for every year I had that are HOFers. Now I have a monster box of HOFers for each of Hockey and Basketball.

Question now is, How would you organize? My 2 ideas are:

1] By year by set. All cards in the HOF collection are arranged this way in the TCDB.

2] By name by year. Then each HOFer in the collection can be arranged by his name.

The trick is to have the physical collection  match the TCDB listing. I believe either 1 or 2 accomplishes that. But which one is better? Your opinions?

BTW, thx everybody. 

I would personally go by brand/year and then by name, but maybe if there are some players you like in particular, you could set those aside by name and then year.  For example, most of my Hall of Famers (other than the ones in my HoF binder) are organized by #1, but HoFers who spent time with the Reds get the #2 treatment.   

I keep my Luc Robitaille non King cards separate from my Kings collection.  My orginzation is lsited below.

1.  By year

2.  By brand

3.  By card number

I place the inserts after the base set, and lplacing the parallels to the base set.  The parallels to the inserts are placed after the base inserts.

I hope that this helps.

I keep my Hall of Famers organized by player, in order of year inducted. That way, I can just add the new inductees at the end each year without reorganizing eveuthing. Plus, it keeps a historical record as well.

My method was just a single card of everyone, and that massive SSPC set from the 1980s helped with staying on the low price end, though the 1987 cards of Catfish, Billy Williams and Ray Dandridge I never did find any where (not doing the physical collection anymore, so I'm not interested in them).  
https://www.tradingcarddb.com/List.cfm/lid/6248/National-Baseball-Hall-of-Fame-Inductees

A couple I did lean on a sketch artist on ebay to do 1 of 1 cards of the inductee, but for the most part you can find a good low end priced card for just about all 333 inductees.

Ahhhhh

I would do Player Name, then set cards by year.  

For example, say it's Mark Messier, I'd go from whatever my favorite company is, or whomever his rookie card was with first, and go forward from there through his years in that company's set.  Then whatever company you'd want comes next, and so on.

Since I was just seeing if anything new popped up on him in recent months and don't see anything beyond cards as a Royal, his plaque postcard and some memorabilia cards without images, John Schuerholz?